Malevolent Planet 2D - QA is hard
Hey! We're already in the first week of April for 2024 and that reminds me I should plan my short vacation breaks for this year. I think next year most likely I'll make a move to another country so this year will probably be my last "carefree" year, in the sense that despite the many work responsibilities I have I don't have to worry about mortgages and similar things yet.
Now about the game, I've received some useful bug reports since Friday and I've solved most of them already, but I'll still write them down.
Bugs:
The Elevator popup button isn't visible when you go in the elevator on the ship. This is because I moved the menu icons around and the elevator icon is a "child gameobject" of those so the elevator icon now shows up outside of player/camera view. I fixed it by repositioning it.
The game goes black and not responding after the initial splash screen. This isn't actually a bug or a crash, it's just that while the game loads for the first time on a fresh build it'll take 10-20 seconds to load everything. I fixed this by adding a loading bar.
The Letter shower content bad ending loop can be confusing to players. When you pick the "bad choice" that unlocks an exclusive scene, after the scene plays you get some dialogue text then the game reloads from the moment you entered the shower. I added some dialogue text when picking a bad choice to make it clearer that if you pick the other choice the game won't loop again, as the other choice continues the plot.
A few mismatched dialogue text tags in the latest content. Fixed the ones I could see quickly.
Sounds:
Contract VA for recordings for the game, sounds for animations, scenes, and general dialogue lines (like a very surprised sound when the dialogue line shows surprise)
Replace placeholder sounds in some dialogues.
Content:
Prepare some illustration references/renders for possible Melissa & MC scenes at the waterfall.
Write dialogues to advance content and give a reason for your character to take a shower to unlock the possibility first freeroam showering scene on the ship.
Start working on the demo version of the game that showcases different areas in the game in order to show a preview of what the "full build" offers.
Maybe offer a 'skip content' menu that allows you to skip to different parts of the ISA & aftermath and pick the choices you'd pick in normal gameplay, something like a fast-forward menu.
Release(s):
Update the existing Patron builds in the March posts with the bugfixes for the bugs reported above, I'd like to do this today but if I don't manage today then it'll definitely happen tomorrow.
Release on Friday a public build with a demo of the demo :D I'm not yet sure how this will look.
So I'm already one step ahead of the bugs and fortunately the bugs aren't critical outside of the ship elevator popup icon not displaying in the correct place which prevents progression. Therefore, not only that but the other bugfixes will be included in today or tomorrow's updates.
As a side positive note, it seems that saves over the past 3-6 monthly releases work consistently with the newest releases, so going forward this should still be valid and you won't need to start new playthroughs if you won't want to in order to access the newest content.